


Change Comes to Neverland

by schizoauthoress



Category: Hook (1991), Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Background Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, I gave Rufio a pretty dark pre-Neverland past, Non-Graphic Violence, brief mention of a WWII atrocity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 15:58:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9242990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schizoauthoress/pseuds/schizoauthoress
Summary: There are differences between Neverland and the Lost Boys under Peter Pan, and under Rufio the Pan. (Rufio-centric, pre-movie until the last section)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely sure if I should warn for "non-graphic" or "graphic" violence -- 'Hook' the movie is a little weird in that respect, in that you've got violence such as 'the Boo Box' torture but you don't see anything. I think what I've written here is canon-typical, but please let me know if you, after reading this, think that I should use the Graphic Violence archive warning.

Rufio wonders, sometimes, what would have happened to him if the granddaughter of the legendary Wendy-lady hadn't entranced Peter so -- if Peter Pan hadn't left Neverland and left it in Rufio's care. Rufio is a child -- had been for more than twenty years too long when he became the Lost Boys' leader -- but he's never been a fool. He's watched how things happen within Neverland: how the pirates' numbers ebb and swell according to Peter's whim, how the tribe comes and goes and is not always the same one (though Peter never notices), how the mermaids' songs change. Rufio has seen how Peter watches the boys, and marked how betrayed he seems over the ones who dare to change…

He's seen Peter walk away with them and come back alone. So Rufio hides his too-old eyes with bright, challenging smiles and tries his best to command Peter's attention. Peter probably knows that Rufio is growing, too, was already more grown-up than most when he came to Neverland. But if there's one thing Peter loves, it's a game. So Rufio makes it a game -- catch me if you can, catch me breaking your unspoken rule.

Peter could kill him. Would kill him for the crime of growing up -- "becoming a pirate" -- with only a few moments of remorse before forgetting him entirely, perhaps by sundown. Rufio doesn't really mind it. He's had people trying to kill him before.

Men will kill you for the land you're standing on. Men will put a gun in your hand, call you one of them, and make you march to your death. Men will make (and break) promises that if you do as they say, your family will be protected. Men can't be bargained with, or distracted, or appeased -- not like the fey creature that Peter is. Rufio prefers this game. Sometimes it feels like he can win.

Peter is not always dangerous or cruel. He can be kind, he can be funny -- but he's as changeable as the wind. Still, there are times that Rufio remembers fondly. Peter holding onto both his hands as he walked forward into empty air; Rufio remembers those wild eyes looking almost gentle as Peter led him into flight for no reason at all, murmuring "Happy thoughts, happy thoughts...!" 

He remembers Peter whispering secrets learned from the strange and untamed Neverland wilderness, and these are things that Rufio realizes later not all Lost Boys have been told. Every Lost Boy has at least one moment where he believes that he is Peter Pan's favorite. Rufio is no different.

It's when he's the Pan that Rufio is different.

===============

1) Remembering

You're not supposed to remember your old names. The little ones never do. But Rufio does, even if "Rufio" was the only name he ever told Peter and the Lost Boys. He only says his old name in his head, to himself, these days… but he cannot forget it.

He's not the only one; he's sure of that. 

Thudbutt mumbles "Saidu" to himself, when the pixies sprinkle him with dust, and rises into the air like a released cork. Rufio hears Don't Ask whispering the familiar Latin cadences of Mass prayers into the dark night, but isn't brave enough to risk Peter's displeasure by joining in. 

There are parts of his life before Neverland that Rufio doesn't want to remember. The march northward along Manila Bay, with barely any food or water passed out by the enemy, being beaten, being forced to sit in the sweltering sun as a form of torture. Rufio remembers. Sometimes when a man, or a boy, would collapse from fatigue... the Japanese would run them over with a truck. He could close his eyes, but not his ears.

Sometimes he dreams of those days. When he wakes, after those dreams, he'll make a mad dash to the nearest lake, and jump in. And in the cool, quiet privacy of the water, Rufio wonders if there's something that dark in Peter's past, that no one is allowed to remember anything of theirs.

* * * *

Rufio the Pan only rarely speaks of his life before Neverland. 

He will never tell the story of seeing the pale face of the little boy in green, peering at him from the top of a pandan palm. Peter had made a beckoning gesture, and Rufio saw one of the exhausted boys give a final sigh... then the boy had gotten up, leaving his body behind, and Peter had taken one translucent brown hand into his solid, fair-skinned one.

Rufio had stood too, and followed after Peter, until the strange wild boy had noticed him, and blown a handful of pixie dust into his face. But none of the Lost Boys have ever been, or will ever be, told that tale.

The difference is, the Lost Boys who follow Rufio are free to speak of what they remember. They're free to tell stories of the families they left behind, if they wish.

When Rufio teaches Pockets how to fish, he tells the younger boy about the days spent learning all about fishing from his grandfather. (That day, Pockets gets a catfish on his line that's so big, Rufio has to save him from being dragged into the water. They haul it in together, and the Lost Boys feast that night without having to pretend first. Neverland can be generous, even in Peter's absence.)

===============

2) War With the "Indians"

The Jolly Roger puts out to sea. Rufio stands on the clifftop and watches the bright sails recede, realizing that Peter must be bored of fighting pirates for now. 

Peter isn't at the Lost Boys' hideaway when Rufio and Don't Ask get back to make their report. Ace and Magpie and Sami are gone too, and Rufio feels dread stir in his stomach. Magpie was here when Rufio was brought. Has he gotten taller, or more melancholy, or some other small unasked for betrayal that makes Peter's fingers itch for his knife? He wouldn't believe that the others were at risk, but it's happened before.

They return in two days, all of them, but Rufio's relief sours some when he sees that they have brought along a boy from the tribes. The boy has a black eye, and Ace says they caught him "trespassing", so now he's a prisoner. Peter has sent a message to the chief, demanding a war. Thudbutt has some of the boys go collect things to make armor, warning them not to stray too far, "just in case the Indians attack". It's their turn, after all.

No attacks come. The only one who comes is a tall, wiry-slender tribal girl, carrying a long knife bare in one small fist. "That's my brother," she says to Peter. "I want him back."

Peter laughs and calls her Princess Tiger Lily, even though she's taller than the last girl he named that, and her face is broader with a sharper nose. Her hair is darker than the last Tiger Lily's, and her skin a different shade of brown, closer to Rufio's own. That's when Rufio knows.

The tribes have a way out. They aren't the same, not every time.

* * * *

After Peter flies away, for what the Lost Boys think will be forever, the first thing Rufio does is run into the woods. The golden blade bounces in the sheath at his hip, a goad forward, a reminder of his sudden new responsibility. Rufio is the Pan now, but he won't be Peter Pan.

"I'm sorry," a breathless Rufio says to the chief, after he's been brought to the village, several warriors trailing after him with arrows aimed at his back. "I don't know your name."

There's something that Rufio almost recognizes in the man's eyes, something that reminds him of his father. That's a painful subject for Rufio, so he packs the feeling away, stuffing it down deep. 

All the same, that sense of familiarity makes it easier to talk to the chief -- who, it turns out, is really named Kakitew... something. Rufio's tongue trips over the unfamiliar sounds. The chief smirks and says Rufio can call him 'Black Bear' if that's easier. Rufio feels his face grow hot, but he nods. An accord with the tribes is more important that his own pride.

The Lost Boys grumble at first, when Rufio tells them that he's made peace with the tribes. It's something Peter never would have done, since he had too much fun making war. But the discontent doesn't last, even among those brought to Neverland by Peter. They haven't forgotten, like Peter would have, Rufio thinks. But the tribes -- which still change, not the same one every time that the Lost Boys go looking -- have games enough, and trade enough, to entice the boys.

Sami learns to make better bows and sturdier arrows because of their peace accord with the tribe. The next time that the pirates try to attack the Lost Boys' hideaway, they get a nasty surprise. Captain Hook's hat goes flying off his head, pinned right through and stuck to a tree, during that particular rout. When Rufio sees, he crows his approval -- and that's the first time that the Lost Boys take their cue from him, crowing back fiercely. When he leaps to cross swords with the pirate, the Lost Boys start to chant his name, and Rufio's heart soars.

He is the Pan!

===============

3) When They Grow

Rufio can't stop the Lost Boys from growing, any more than Peter could. But he will never raise a blade to them for it.

They lose some of their number to the pirates, and always have. Even Peter couldn’t notice, couldn’t catch, all the Lost Boys who grew out of their boyhood. 

There is a reason that they call growing up “becoming a pirate”, after all.

Rufio the Pan doesn’t see enemies in those gangly creatures, with their cracking voices and rising tempers and thin cheeks shaded with irregular stubble. They’re caught between two states -- child and adult, ally and enemy -- and he won’t kill them on merely the possibility of defection. 

For this situation, Rufio walks away from the Lost Boys’ hideaway beside the boy who will soon be a boy no longer. He will return alone, but he has left no body in the forest undergrowth.

Sometimes, it’s the mermaids who know what is happening, and is they who know what to do. Rufio has watched some of those who leave set sail on boats built by the mermaids’ hands. (Perhaps these young men end up on the Jolly Roger anyway, but Rufio has never recognized them if that is so.) He thinks maybe he would be one of these, if Peter had been the sort to let people go, or if he didn’t have the responsibility of caring for the Lost Boys.

Sometimes, Rufio leads the way to the territory claimed by the tribes, and an elder there will see the changes writ on growing flesh without having to be told. Those boys leave with the tribe and never come back. Wherever they go, Rufio never tries to imagine. (Perhaps he’s afraid that they just go back to the world that he took them from, unmoored in time. It’s a fate he would hate, and one he doesn’t want to think he’s condemned them to.)

===============

And what remains unchanged? Rufio says it to every new arrival, a simple fact of life: "All grown-ups are pirates. We kill pirates."

The ones who are seduced away by promises of treasure, or the opportunity to bring pain to those who wrong them, or darker things that Rufio cannot imagine -- the Lost Boys who do become pirates -- are the worst kind of betrayers. And like Peter Pan before, Rufio shows no mercy to those who have betrayed him.

When he sees the nervous man with the mousy brown hair, sad and shifty eyes hidden by round spectacles, Rufio thinks this is just another bit of sport dredged up from the sea. Someone the pirates took in and then discarded for being useless. 

“I'm not a pirate,” the nervous man insists, when Rufio smiles and tells him what happens to pirates. “It so happens I am a lawyer.”

The word means nothing to Rufio. He declares, “Kill the lawyer!”

The Lost Boys brandish their weapons, and echo back, “Kill the lawyer!”

A sheepish smile flickers for a moment on the man’s face, as though he considered it might help defuse the situation then discarded the thought quickly. “I’m not that kind of lawyer!” He says, hands up, before he turns to flee.

The Lost Boys can have some fun running this one ragged, as they have with other castoffs before. And when it’s not fun anymore, Rufio will get rid of the man. Men can’t be bargained with, after all.

But Tinkerbell says that this isn’t a man -- that this is Pan. The Lost Boys murmur their disbelief, and for a moment, Rufio grasps at the slim possibility that this is some stupid fairy idea of a joke.

She insists, and even Rufio can’t ignore the sincerity in Tinkerbell's voice. He looks at this pirate castoff, he looks into those dull and domesticated eyes… and Rufio hardens his heart so that it won’t break.


End file.
